“Audit who you ACTUALLY are.”

I surround myself with social media #alldayeveryday.  I know you’re in the same boat.  But I am like obsessed.  I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and touch that “F” square on my phone’s home screen and scroll through Facebook until I get to the place I stopped before I went to bed.  Hi, my name is Britta and I’m addicted to Facebook.  Anyway, I’m that girl.  I own it.  I’m starting to be okay with it.  Learning about people is fascinating.  Most of what makes its way to people’s actual Facebook accounts is super filtered and fake.  But learning about that is fascinating as well.  Nonetheless, every now and then I stumble upon something life-changing.  Seriously, every now and then social media comes through for me and perfection is delivered right to me–in those sleepy morning scrolls, a new life is born.  I had that happen this morning…

I clicked on a video.  Gary Vaynerchuk spoke to some college class.  It appeared to be very off the cuff–he cursed a few times and his delivery was a reigned in version of stream-of-conscious thought.  The majority of the talk he merely dispensed advice and some thoughts about starting businesses, living life, and introspection.  The title of this blog came from the video.

At work we audit stuff all the time.  I’m a slave to the MS Excel and we constantly audit our lists and info, and blah blah blah.  But a self-audit?  Mind BLOWN!  I do all this self work.  I journal.  I’ve had lengthy bouts with therapy.  I tap (EFT).  I read.  I feel like I’m constantly evaluating myself, taking stock of who I am and what I need to fix.  Sometimes I have to take a break because I tend to cycle–constantly processing the same thing over and over and over again in my head.

But Gary said something pretty awesome… he poked fun at the fact that most people in the room will spend the next 20-30 years of their lives focusing on the things they aren’t good at and trying to strengthen those aspects.  But, he thinks, you need to do a self-audit (*chills) to figure out what you are really good at and then sink all of your time and energy using those aspects of yourself to drive your success.  It’s true!  I immediately thought back to my cold-calling sales days.  ‘m not good at selling over the phone.  I took classes, read books, forced myself to meet daily call quotas, and just tried a million things to get me “okay” with it.  Honestly, I’ll never like it.  I’ll never be good at it.  Why waste any additional time trying to cultivate something I suck at???  It makes so much sense.

Pay attention to your best self and work your ass off to finds ways to build success from there.  It sounds so simple right now.  It sounds like I’ve heard it before.  I need to make this my focus.

Everything (even social media sometimes) is dropped onto your path for a reason.  Listen, ask questions, and LEARN!  Stay curious, my friends.